By Anna Moochoon, LCPC
A little time to arrive
Come in. Take whichever chair feels comfortable.
You may be tired. Perhaps a little embarrassed, or aware of some shame that has accompanied you here. That is perfectly all right. You can arrive just as you are.
We sit for a while. You settle into the chair, and I let the silence be. There is time to arrive before finding anything to say.
Perhaps you have wondered what a conversation about sexuality might feel like. We can find our way into it together. You needn’t have an opening sentence prepared.
Let us begin with an easy breath, a little longer if that feels comfortable. Allow your weight to settle into the support beneath you. Your eyes may soften, and the part of your mind that has been working things out all day can rest a little.
For now, you can listen.
A sexological worldview.
A funny phrase, if it weren’t a little too serious.
You may ask, what is it?
The world we bring with us
One of the first things I make room for in sex therapy is becoming acquainted with the world a person brings with them. It is there in the words they choose, in what they hope for, and in the things they have never thought to question. We each carry such a world into our relationships. Quietly, it gives meaning to what happens between us.
You might imagine a house you have lived in for many years. You know the light through the windows, the sound of a door, the place where you like to sit in the afternoon. Its atmosphere is so familiar that you scarcely notice it. Then someone visits and pauses beside a window. You follow their gaze, and for a moment you see your own surroundings afresh.
In our conversations, we sometimes do something rather like this.
You will have heard people speak of a philosophical worldview, a political outlook, or a religious understanding of life. These are ways of finding our bearings. They hold something of what we value, what we believe, and how we understand our place among other people.
We have an understanding of sexuality, too. We may simply have had fewer opportunities to become acquainted with it.
Now we come to definitions, and become a little more serious for a moment. Definitions sometimes help. Sometimes they leave us further from the thing we were trying to understand. Here, a little definition may give us somewhere to begin our soul searching, or, in clinical language, to explore the beliefs beneath our sexual scripts.
A sexual script holds our expectations about how an encounter might unfold and what it will mean. I use sexological worldview for the larger understanding in which those expectations take shape.
What sex means to you
Before we consider what happens between two people, there is an earlier question.
What is sex, fundamentally, to you?
Perhaps a word comes to mind. Love, pleasure, nature, union. Perhaps several arrive together, and you are not quite sure which belongs first.
If your understanding has been shaped by religious belief, sexuality may have a place within the sacred order of life. It may mean procreation, faithfulness, or the joining of two people before God. Pleasure may be welcomed as a gift within that union, or approached with questions about permission and restraint. Within marriage, sex may signify devotion, a promise renewed through the body. It may also be understood as a responsibility. These meanings can live close together, although they may feel quite different in experience.
You may find your bearings in an evolutionary account, with its language of reproduction, attraction, attachment, and the continuity of life. Or your attention may turn towards the workings of the body: hormones, sensation, arousal, orgasm. These perspectives can help us understand something important about sexuality. Here, I am also curious about how that understanding meets your own life. What does a bodily response mean to you? What do you hope to find in an encounter?
Perhaps sex is, above all, an expression of love. You may cherish the thought of being known so intimately that another person understands you without words. Perhaps it belongs to pleasure and play, to the freedom of discovering what you enjoy. For someone else, it carries a sense of communion, a moment in which the familiar boundary between oneself and another seems to soften.
Sexuality may also be woven into identity, freedom, or belonging. Being desired can mean feeling attractive, recognised, or reassured. Questions of power and vulnerability may be present. And in some lives, sexuality occupies a quieter place among other sources of meaning. Companionship, creativity, solitude, or spiritual life may matter more.
You may recognise yourself in several of these understandings. Most of us carry a mixture. Different meanings come forward at different times, sometimes comfortably, sometimes asking us to reconsider something we thought we knew.
Making room for pleasure
Among all these explanations, pleasure may remain rather quiet.
We may have learnt what sex is for without spending much time considering what enjoying it means to us. Pleasure can sit tucked beneath the wish to have children, sustain a marriage, express love, or reassure someone that they are wanted.
I like to pause here.
What place has pleasure been given in your understanding?
You might notice how the question lands. Perhaps pleasure has always felt welcome. Perhaps it has needed a reason, or been easier to offer than to receive. There may be something here you have never quite heard yourself say.
The stories that shape us
Our understanding of sexuality takes shape through the life we have lived. We notice how people express affection. We hear stories about falling in love. There may have been conversations about bodies, or a certain silence whenever the subject arose. A passing remark can stay with us for years, along with the expression on someone’s face.
Our own encounters add further layers. An unexpected tenderness, the pleasure of being desired, a moment we continue to think about afterwards. We make meaning as we go, sometimes without noticing the conclusions we have drawn.
Even now, with sex so visible around us, speaking personally about it can feel unfamiliar. Sexuality remains surrounded by taboos, some spoken and others quietly understood. We may know someone’s views on faith, politics, and the world at large, yet have little sense of what intimacy means to them. Sometimes we have scarcely heard ourselves speak about it either.
So we return to that familiar house, and take a little time to look around.
In my practice, I listen closely to the images people find for their experience. Someone describes desire as a spark. Another speaks of warmth that gathers slowly. Through these stories, and through clinical research, I have learnt to listen both for the processes that may be involved and for the particular meaning they hold in a person’s life.
The story gives us somewhere to begin.
A quiet journey inward
As you have been listening, perhaps something of your own has come to mind. We can leave a little room for it now.
Feel the support of the chair beneath you. If it would be welcome, move your neck gently and let your head find a comfortable place to rest. Take an easy breath, allowing your face and eyes to soften as much as they wish.
Let your attention settle on one sensation. It might be your heartbeat, a feeling in your belly, or the warmth of your hands. There is nothing you need to make happen. You can stay here for a moment, noticing.
Then, when you are ready, offer your mind a word.
Pleasure, perhaps. Or bedroom. Or kiss.
Choose one that invites a little curiosity, and let it linger.
A room may come to mind, with light falling through a window. Perhaps there is music somewhere nearby, or the remembered texture of a blanket. You might recall someone’s hand, the feeling of waiting, the first small flutter of desire you knew how to recognise.
Allow the impression to arrive in its own way.
It may lead towards a moment at school, a conversation with a parent, a scene from a film. Something you read or heard may return. You might find a few words that seem familiar, though you cannot quite remember when you began to believe them.
Let your mind wander, without needing to gather these fragments into a coherent picture. This is something of what we mean by free association. We give the mind a starting place and allow its connections to unfold.
If an early experience comes to mind and feels comfortable to stay with, you might notice what accompanies it now. A little warmth, a movement in your chest, an impulse to draw closer or turn away. You can leave any memory where it is and return to the room whenever you wish.
What arises may be a recollection, an imagined scene, or a mixture of the two. We can be curious about its meaning now without treating it as an exact account of the past.
For a little while, there is no need to explain.
I will give you some time here.
When you are ready, let your attention return to your surroundings. You might reach for a piece of paper, a notebook, or a notes app, and write down a little of what arrived. A phrase, a colour, a remembered gesture. Leave space between the fragments, and let one lead towards another if it wishes.
There is no need to impose order yet. We will come to that later.
And if you would like to take me a little way into your inner world, I am here.
We can begin with whichever part of the story you feel ready to share.
Considering therapy?
Therapy can offer a private, thoughtful space to explore the beliefs, experiences and meanings that shape your sexuality, at a pace that feels right for you.
Learn about sex therapy, or schedule a free 15 minute consultation to explore whether working together feels like a good fit. I offer online therapy for adults in Maryland.